TODAY IN HISTORY: September 28 - Today's Stories: Early Impressions of California, W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues
Early Impressions of California
On September 28, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo of Portugal, sailing under the Spanish flag, sailed into San Diego Bay. While exploring the northwest shores of Mexico, Cabrillo became the first European to reach California. Cabrillo’s observations may have informed Diego Gutierrez’s draft of the first map of America to include the name California (pictured below), which references Baja California, or Cape California, at the far southern part of Baja. This image is displayed in the Inventing America section of the Library of Congress online exhibition 1492: An Ongoing Voyage.
By 1888, Harriet Harper observed a more refined San Diego. In her Letters from California, she describes San Diego as:
curled up in the arms of her beautiful bay…[with] long lines of yellow graveled streets… many wooden houses…[and] utter innocence of flower and foliage…. An electric railway runs past my windows; steam motors take you in any direction. The principal streets have electric lights and cement pavements, and there is an encouraging amount of building going on…all conditions are favorable for a future great city.“VII: The Place of Ramona’s Marriage—A Trip into Mexico” in Letters from California by Harriet Harper. Portland, ME: Press of B. Thurston & co., 1888. “California as I Saw It:” First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849 to 1900. General Collections
This 1915 cityscape shows the continued growth and prosperity of San Diego in the early twentieth century.
Learn More
- For more information on early exploration of the Americas visit 1492: An Ongoing Voyage, an online Library of Congress exhibition.
- The Library of Congress Digital Collection “California as I Saw It”: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849 to 1900 contains many accounts of nineteenth-century San Diego. Search the collection on San Diego to retrieve items similar to the works quoted above.
- Search on San Diego in Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier, a bilingual, multi-format English-Spanish digital library site that explores the history, geography, and culture of Spain and the interactions between Spain and the United States from the 15th century to the present for information on the exploration and early settlement of that area.
- California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell contains transcriptions of songs from the gold rush era, including “Joe Bowers”and “Betsy from Pike.”
W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues
On Saturday, September 28, 1912, William Christopher (W. C.) Handy’s “Mister Crump,” retitled “The Memphis Blues ,” went on sale at Bry’s Department Store in Memphis. Although the first 1,000 copies sold out in three days, Handy was told that the song had flopped. When the publisher offered to buy the rights for just fifty dollars, the composer agreed.
Born in Alabama in 1873, Handy attended Teachers Agricultural and Mechanical College in Huntsville. After a short stint teaching school, he began playing cornet with dance bands that traveled the Mississippi Delta. Handy transcribed and collected blues songs that he had heard on the road in the 1890s, but continued to play the ragtime dance tunes that audiences demanded. To hear recordings of W.C. Handy performing, search the American Folklife Center’s Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog.
By 1909, Handy had settled in Memphis, Tennessee, a Delta city with a cosmopolitan population and a limitless appetite for music. In Memphis, even mayoral races warranted musical accompaniment. As one of the top bandleaders in town, Handy was hired by aspiring mayor E. H. Crump. To attract attention to his candidate, Handy wrote an original tune entitled “Mister Crump” which merged the blues sound with popular ragtime style by slightly flattening the third tone of the scale. Overwhelmingly popular, the song contributed to electoral success for Crump and musical success for Handy.
A Lasting Impact
Swindled out of his first big hit, W.C. Handy went on to produce “St. Louis Blues ” in 1914, “Beale Street Blues ” in 1916, and other popular works. By the time of his death in 1958, W. C. Handy was recognized across the world as the “Father of the Blues.”
In the 1910s and 1920s, songs like “Memphis Blues” and “Beale Street Blues” were considered ragtime dance tunes. The emergence of ragtime music changed popular dance. Search on ragtime in the Library’s digital collection An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920. Five dance manuals in this collection were published in 1914, including Modern Dancing by the famous exhibition ballroom dancers, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle. One of the first dances developed for ragtime, the Cake Walk, is one of sixty-one short films available in Variety Stage Motion Pictures, part of the American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 collection. Also be sure to visit the Library of Congress YouTube page to view a recording of dancers doing the cake walk , as well as a comedy cake walk .
Learn More
- To hear recordings of W.C. Handy performing, search the American Folklife Center’s Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog. Also, be sure to check out the Alan Lomax Collection for more field recordings of the blues and other forms of traditional American song.
- Search our digital collection, Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip using the terms blues and field holler to hear rural Southerners sing the type of tunes that inspired Handy.
- Visit the award-winning collection, African-American Sheet Music from the Brown University Library. Search on keywords such as Handy, blues, ragtime, rag or cake walk to view more musical works in this tradition. In viewing this collection, keep in mind that the Library of Congress presents these documents as part of the record of the past. These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress and Brown University do not endorse the views expressed in these collections, which may contain materials offensive to some readers.
- Visit the William P. Gottlieb Collection to see photographs of the musicians who elaborated on Handy’s musical tradition during the 1930s.
- Search the collection Historic American Sheet Music on Handy to browse early published sheet music of Handy’s tunes. Search on the keyword blues to view sheet music inspired by the “Father of the Blues.”
- Visit The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America. The collections and special presentations include Historic Sheet Music 1800 to 1922, approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, including the sheet music to The Memphis Blues.
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